Ghazala Jamil

Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies, Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility

Through an ethnographic exploration of everyday life infused with Marxist urbanism and critical theory, this work charts out the changes taking place in Muslim neighbourhoods in Delhi in the backdrop ...
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Through an ethnographic exploration of everyday life infused with Marxist urbanism and critical theory, this work charts out the changes taking place in Muslim neighbourhoods in Delhi in the backdrop of rapid urbanization and capitalist globalization. It argues that there is an implicit materialist logic in prejudice and segregation experienced by Muslims. Further, it finds that different classes within Muslims are treated differentially in the discriminatory process. The resultant spatial ‘diversity’ and differentiation this gives rise to among the Muslim neighbourhoods creates an illusion of ‘choice’ but in reality, the flexibility of the confining boundaries only serve to make these stronger and shatterproof. It is asserted that while there is no attempt at integration of Muslims socially and spatially, from within the structures of urban governance, it would be a fallacy to say that the state is absent from within these segregated enclaves. The disciplinary state, neo-liberal processes of globalization, and the discursive practices such as news media, cinema, social science research, combine together to produce a hegemonic effect in which stereotyped representations are continually employed uncritically and erroneously to prevent genuine attempts at developing specific and nuanced understanding of the situation of urban Muslims in India. The book finds that the exclusion of Muslims spatially and socially is a complex process containing contradictory elements that have reduced Indian Muslims to being ‘normative’ non-citizens and homo sacer whose legal status is not an equal claim to citizenship. The book also includes an account of the way in which residents of these segregated Muslim enclaves are finding ways to build hope in their lives.Less

Accumulation by Segregation : Muslim Localities in Delhi

Ghazala Jamil

Published in print: 2017-11-02

Through an ethnographic exploration of everyday life infused with Marxist urbanism and critical theory, this work charts out the changes taking place in Muslim neighbourhoods in Delhi in the backdrop of rapid urbanization and capitalist globalization. It argues that there is an implicit materialist logic in prejudice and segregation experienced by Muslims. Further, it finds that different classes within Muslims are treated differentially in the discriminatory process. The resultant spatial ‘diversity’ and differentiation this gives rise to among the Muslim neighbourhoods creates an illusion of ‘choice’ but in reality, the flexibility of the confining boundaries only serve to make these stronger and shatterproof. It is asserted that while there is no attempt at integration of Muslims socially and spatially, from within the structures of urban governance, it would be a fallacy to say that the state is absent from within these segregated enclaves. The disciplinary state, neo-liberal processes of globalization, and the discursive practices such as news media, cinema, social science research, combine together to produce a hegemonic effect in which stereotyped representations are continually employed uncritically and erroneously to prevent genuine attempts at developing specific and nuanced understanding of the situation of urban Muslims in India. The book finds that the exclusion of Muslims spatially and socially is a complex process containing contradictory elements that have reduced Indian Muslims to being ‘normative’ non-citizens and homo sacer whose legal status is not an equal claim to citizenship. The book also includes an account of the way in which residents of these segregated Muslim enclaves are finding ways to build hope in their lives.

John L. Campbell

Sociology, Politics, Social Movements and Social Change, Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility

This book is about how Donald Trump, who had no prior public service, became president of the United States. It argues that Trump capitalized on a wave of increasing public discontent that stemmed ...
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This book is about how Donald Trump, who had no prior public service, became president of the United States. It argues that Trump capitalized on a wave of increasing public discontent that stemmed from the demise of the country’s Golden Age of prosperity. This involved decades-long trends in the American economy, race relations, ideology, and political polarization, all of which fueled rising discontent across America. It reached a tipping point by the time Barack Obama was elected president. When the 2008 financial crisis hit and Obama was elected the first African American president, he tried to resolve the crisis and fix the nation’s ailing health care system. But in doing so he pushed rising discontent over the edge. Political gridlock in Washington resulted. Discontent skyrocketed. Americans were fed up and looked for a savior. Trump was lucky to be in the right place at the right time and rode that wave of discontent all the way to the White House.Less

American Discontent : The Rise of Donald Trump and Decline of the Golden Age

John L. Campbell

Published in print: 2018-07-26

This book is about how Donald Trump, who had no prior public service, became president of the United States. It argues that Trump capitalized on a wave of increasing public discontent that stemmed from the demise of the country’s Golden Age of prosperity. This involved decades-long trends in the American economy, race relations, ideology, and political polarization, all of which fueled rising discontent across America. It reached a tipping point by the time Barack Obama was elected president. When the 2008 financial crisis hit and Obama was elected the first African American president, he tried to resolve the crisis and fix the nation’s ailing health care system. But in doing so he pushed rising discontent over the edge. Political gridlock in Washington resulted. Discontent skyrocketed. Americans were fed up and looked for a savior. Trump was lucky to be in the right place at the right time and rode that wave of discontent all the way to the White House.

Almost all studies of the nation’s extreme inequality of income and wealth have overlooked a critical, overarching cause of the creation of The New Gilded Age. The permanent political class has ...
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Almost all studies of the nation’s extreme inequality of income and wealth have overlooked a critical, overarching cause of the creation of The New Gilded Age. The permanent political class has driven and sustained economic and political inequality not only with the government policies it has crafted over the past four decades. It has created inequality by becoming a self-dealing, self-serving nepotistic oligarchy that is enabling the One Percent and the .01 Percent to create an American aristocracy of wealth.
American Oligarchy describes a multifaceted culture of self-dealing and corruption reaching into every sector of American society. The political class’s direct creation of economic inequality by channeling the flow of income and wealth to elites, has been described extensively; less exposed has been how its self-aggrandizement indirectly—but hidden in plain sight—creates a culture of corruption that infects the entire society.Less

American Oligarchy : The Permanent Political Class

Ron Formisano

Published in print: 2017-09-15

Almost all studies of the nation’s extreme inequality of income and wealth have overlooked a critical, overarching cause of the creation of The New Gilded Age. The permanent political class has driven and sustained economic and political inequality not only with the government policies it has crafted over the past four decades. It has created inequality by becoming a self-dealing, self-serving nepotistic oligarchy that is enabling the One Percent and the .01 Percent to create an American aristocracy of wealth.
American Oligarchy describes a multifaceted culture of self-dealing and corruption reaching into every sector of American society. The political class’s direct creation of economic inequality by channeling the flow of income and wealth to elites, has been described extensively; less exposed has been how its self-aggrandizement indirectly—but hidden in plain sight—creates a culture of corruption that infects the entire society.

An essential African American artist of his era, Archibald Motley Jr. created paintings of black Chicago that aligned him with the revisionist aims of the New Negro Renaissance. Yet Motley’s approach ...
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An essential African American artist of his era, Archibald Motley Jr. created paintings of black Chicago that aligned him with the revisionist aims of the New Negro Renaissance. Yet Motley’s approach to constructing a New Negro—a dignified figure both accomplished and worthy of respect—reflected the challenges faced by African American artists working on the project of racial reinvention and uplift. Phoebe Wolfskill demonstrates how Motley’s art embodied the tenuous nature of the Black Renaissance and the wide range of ideas that structured it. Focusing on key works in Motley’s oeuvre, Wolfskill reveals the artist’s complexity and the variety of influences that informed his work. Motley’s paintings suggest that the racist, problematic image of the Old Negro was not a relic of the past but an influence that pervaded the Black Renaissance. Exploring Motley in relation to works by notable black and non-black contemporaries, Wolfskill reinterprets Motley’s oeuvre as part of a broad effort to define American cultural identity through race, class, gender, religion, and regional affiliation. The book concludes by considering how racist images of the past continue to fuel conflicts over black representation.
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Archibald Motley Jr. and Racial Reinvention : The Old Negro in New Negro Art

Phoebe Wolfskill

Published in print: 2017-08-15

An essential African American artist of his era, Archibald Motley Jr. created paintings of black Chicago that aligned him with the revisionist aims of the New Negro Renaissance. Yet Motley’s approach to constructing a New Negro—a dignified figure both accomplished and worthy of respect—reflected the challenges faced by African American artists working on the project of racial reinvention and uplift. Phoebe Wolfskill demonstrates how Motley’s art embodied the tenuous nature of the Black Renaissance and the wide range of ideas that structured it. Focusing on key works in Motley’s oeuvre, Wolfskill reveals the artist’s complexity and the variety of influences that informed his work. Motley’s paintings suggest that the racist, problematic image of the Old Negro was not a relic of the past but an influence that pervaded the Black Renaissance. Exploring Motley in relation to works by notable black and non-black contemporaries, Wolfskill reinterprets Motley’s oeuvre as part of a broad effort to define American cultural identity through race, class, gender, religion, and regional affiliation. The book concludes by considering how racist images of the past continue to fuel conflicts over black representation.

Anarchism may be the most misunderstood political ideology of the modern era—it’s surely one of the least studied social movements by English-speaking scholars. Black Flags and Social Movements ...
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Anarchism may be the most misunderstood political ideology of the modern era—it’s surely one of the least studied social movements by English-speaking scholars. Black Flags and Social Movements addresses this deficit with an in-depth analysis of contemporary anarchist movements, as interpreted by social movement theories and the analytical tools of political sociologists. Using unique datasets—gathered by anarchists themselves—the book presents longitudinal and international analyses that focus upon who anarchists are (similar, yet, different from classic anarchists) and where they may be found (most countries in the world, but especially in European and North American cities). Even though scholars have studiously avoided the contradictions and complications that anti-state movements present for their theories, numerous social movement ideas, including political opportunity, new social movements, and social capital theory, are relevant and adaptable to understanding anarchist movements. Due to their sometimes limited numbers and due to their identities as radical anti-authoritarians, anarchists often find themselves collaborating with numerous other social movements, bringing along their values, ideas, and tactics.Less

Black Flags and Social Movements : A Sociological Analysis of Movement Anarchism

Dana M. Williams

Published in print: 2017-12-30

Anarchism may be the most misunderstood political ideology of the modern era—it’s surely one of the least studied social movements by English-speaking scholars. Black Flags and Social Movements addresses this deficit with an in-depth analysis of contemporary anarchist movements, as interpreted by social movement theories and the analytical tools of political sociologists. Using unique datasets—gathered by anarchists themselves—the book presents longitudinal and international analyses that focus upon who anarchists are (similar, yet, different from classic anarchists) and where they may be found (most countries in the world, but especially in European and North American cities). Even though scholars have studiously avoided the contradictions and complications that anti-state movements present for their theories, numerous social movement ideas, including political opportunity, new social movements, and social capital theory, are relevant and adaptable to understanding anarchist movements. Due to their sometimes limited numbers and due to their identities as radical anti-authoritarians, anarchists often find themselves collaborating with numerous other social movements, bringing along their values, ideas, and tactics.

This book provides a history of the American natural and health foods industry and its leadership in the social movement oriented to spreading a natural foods way of life. The natural foods case is ...
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This book provides a history of the American natural and health foods industry and its leadership in the social movement oriented to spreading a natural foods way of life. The natural foods case is used to consider the broader question of what possibilities open up and what limits emerge when private enterprise is involved in movements advocating for broad-based social and cultural change. Beginning with the first American natural foods advocates in the early nineteenth century, and continuing to the early twenty-first century, this history shows how the leadership of the natural foods industry was central to transforming natural foods consumption from a culturally marginal activity associated with religious minorities, immigrants, the elderly, and the infirm, to a hip lifestyle associated with the young, the fit, and the affluent. In the process, industry helped lead the natural foods movement away from an emphasis on asceticism and simple living, and towards a valuation of indulgence and material comforts. The book argues that instead of acting as a singularly eradicalizing force, the natural and health foods industry reinforced the natural foods movement's often radical rejection of medical expertise. The natural foods case demonstrates that business interests promote a flexible approach to cultural meanings and symbols, which undermines cultural authority and catalyzes cultural change.Less

Building Nature's Market : The Business and Politics of Natural Foods

Laura J. Miller

Published in print: 2017-11-17

This book provides a history of the American natural and health foods industry and its leadership in the social movement oriented to spreading a natural foods way of life. The natural foods case is used to consider the broader question of what possibilities open up and what limits emerge when private enterprise is involved in movements advocating for broad-based social and cultural change. Beginning with the first American natural foods advocates in the early nineteenth century, and continuing to the early twenty-first century, this history shows how the leadership of the natural foods industry was central to transforming natural foods consumption from a culturally marginal activity associated with religious minorities, immigrants, the elderly, and the infirm, to a hip lifestyle associated with the young, the fit, and the affluent. In the process, industry helped lead the natural foods movement away from an emphasis on asceticism and simple living, and towards a valuation of indulgence and material comforts. The book argues that instead of acting as a singularly eradicalizing force, the natural and health foods industry reinforced the natural foods movement's often radical rejection of medical expertise. The natural foods case demonstrates that business interests promote a flexible approach to cultural meanings and symbols, which undermines cultural authority and catalyzes cultural change.

Building Power from Below analyzes the success of Walmart workers in Chile. Retail and warehouse workers have achieved the seemingly unachievable. They have organized Walmart. How do we explain ...
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Building Power from Below analyzes the success of Walmart workers in Chile. Retail and warehouse workers have achieved the seemingly unachievable. They have organized Walmart. How do we explain workers’ success in Chile, the cradle of neoliberalism, in challenging the world’s largest and most antiunion corporation? Chilean workers have spent years building grass roots organizations committed to principles of union democracy. While both retail and warehouse workers have successful unions, they have built different organizations due to their industry, workforce, and political histories. The independent retail worker unions are best characterized by what I call flexible militancy. These unions have less structural power, but have significant associational and symbolic power. While they have made notable bread and butter gains, their most notable successes have been in fighting for respect and dignity on the job. Warehouse workers by contrast have significant structural power. Their unions are best characterized by what I call strategic democracy. Their structural power has offered them the opportunity to “map production” and build strategic capacity. They have been especially successful in economic gains. While the model in Chile cannot necessarily be reproduced in different countries, we can certainly gain insights from their approaches, tactics, and strategies.Less

Building Power from Below : Chilean Workers Take On Walmart

Carolina Bank Muñoz

Published in print: 2017-09-15

Building Power from Below analyzes the success of Walmart workers in Chile. Retail and warehouse workers have achieved the seemingly unachievable. They have organized Walmart. How do we explain workers’ success in Chile, the cradle of neoliberalism, in challenging the world’s largest and most antiunion corporation? Chilean workers have spent years building grass roots organizations committed to principles of union democracy. While both retail and warehouse workers have successful unions, they have built different organizations due to their industry, workforce, and political histories. The independent retail worker unions are best characterized by what I call flexible militancy. These unions have less structural power, but have significant associational and symbolic power. While they have made notable bread and butter gains, their most notable successes have been in fighting for respect and dignity on the job. Warehouse workers by contrast have significant structural power. Their unions are best characterized by what I call strategic democracy. Their structural power has offered them the opportunity to “map production” and build strategic capacity. They have been especially successful in economic gains. While the model in Chile cannot necessarily be reproduced in different countries, we can certainly gain insights from their approaches, tactics, and strategies.

Chocolate Cities is built on a simple premise: our current maps of black life are wrong. As Malcolm X made clear in Detroit over a half century ago, the geography of the black American experience is ...
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Chocolate Cities is built on a simple premise: our current maps of black life are wrong. As Malcolm X made clear in Detroit over a half century ago, the geography of the black American experience is best understood as existing within and across varying versions of “the South”—regional areas with distinct yet overlapping and similar patterns of racism, white domination, and oppression alongside place-inspired black strivings, customs, and aspirations for a better and more equal society. Chocolate Cities offers a new geography of the United States based on the lives, experiences, and histories of black Americans called “the Black Map.” Using both cultural sources (film, music, fiction, and plays) and more traditional academic data—U.S. decennial census data (1900–2010); oral histories; multiyear ethnography; photographs; national, state, and local health and wealth data and reports; and archives—this book maps and analyzes black life since Emancipation in America’s “chocolate cities”—cities, towns, neighborhoods, streets, and communities wherein black life and culture are concentrated, maintained, created, and defended.Less

Chocolate Cities : The Black Map of American Life

Marcus Anthony HunterZandria Robinson

Published in print: 2018-01-16

Chocolate Cities is built on a simple premise: our current maps of black life are wrong. As Malcolm X made clear in Detroit over a half century ago, the geography of the black American experience is best understood as existing within and across varying versions of “the South”—regional areas with distinct yet overlapping and similar patterns of racism, white domination, and oppression alongside place-inspired black strivings, customs, and aspirations for a better and more equal society. Chocolate Cities offers a new geography of the United States based on the lives, experiences, and histories of black Americans called “the Black Map.” Using both cultural sources (film, music, fiction, and plays) and more traditional academic data—U.S. decennial census data (1900–2010); oral histories; multiyear ethnography; photographs; national, state, and local health and wealth data and reports; and archives—this book maps and analyzes black life since Emancipation in America’s “chocolate cities”—cities, towns, neighborhoods, streets, and communities wherein black life and culture are concentrated, maintained, created, and defended.

In the past three decades, urban real estate megaprojects—massive, master planned, for profit urban developments—have captured the imagination of politicians and policy-makers across Asia. This book ...
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In the past three decades, urban real estate megaprojects—massive, master planned, for profit urban developments—have captured the imagination of politicians and policy-makers across Asia. This book argues that state actors have been major drivers of these transformative projects, and have realized them through increasingly aggressive efforts to reclaim or acquire land, and to transfer land rights to corporate developers. State actors have specifically sought to monetize land as a strategy of state empowerment, a means to generate budget revenue, distribute patronage, and drive economic growth. This newly assertive state role in land markets constitutes the real estate turn in urban politics in the subtitle of the book. This real estate turn has significant implications for social, political, and ecological change in these societies. The book explores the varied spatial impacts of this real estate turn in three cities—Jakarta, Kolkata, and Chongqing—that differ in their systems of property rights and urban governance.Less

Cities for Profit : The Real Estate Turn in Asia's Urban Politics

Gavin Shatkin

Published in print: 2017-09-15

In the past three decades, urban real estate megaprojects—massive, master planned, for profit urban developments—have captured the imagination of politicians and policy-makers across Asia. This book argues that state actors have been major drivers of these transformative projects, and have realized them through increasingly aggressive efforts to reclaim or acquire land, and to transfer land rights to corporate developers. State actors have specifically sought to monetize land as a strategy of state empowerment, a means to generate budget revenue, distribute patronage, and drive economic growth. This newly assertive state role in land markets constitutes the real estate turn in urban politics in the subtitle of the book. This real estate turn has significant implications for social, political, and ecological change in these societies. The book explores the varied spatial impacts of this real estate turn in three cities—Jakarta, Kolkata, and Chongqing—that differ in their systems of property rights and urban governance.

Much has been published on the history of Japanese immigration to Brazil, Japanese Brazilians in Brazil, and Japanese Brazilians’ “return” labor migrations to Japan (known as dekassegui). Yet none ...
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Much has been published on the history of Japanese immigration to Brazil, Japanese Brazilians in Brazil, and Japanese Brazilians’ “return” labor migrations to Japan (known as dekassegui). Yet none has gone beyond and above the essentialized categories of “the Japanese” in Brazil and “Brazilians” in Japan. This book demonstrates that Japanese Brazilian identity has never been a static, fixed set of traits that can be counted and inventoried. Rather it is about being and becoming, a process of identity in motion responding to the push-and-pull between being positioned and positioning in a historically changing world. The book is based on the author’s painstaking research in Brazil and Japan between 1997 and 2013, involving extensive life history interviews (and follow-ups) with 116 Japanese Brazilians of several generations and diverse social backgrounds, in combination with substantial archival research and multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork. This book examines Japanese immigrants and their descendants’ historically shifting sense of identity that comes from their engagement or experience of historical changes in socioeconomic and political structure. Each chapter illustrates how Japanese Brazilian identity is in formation, across generation, across gender, across class, across race, and in the movement of people between nations.Less

Diaspora and Identity : Japanese Brazilians in Brazil and Japan

Mieko Nishida

Published in print: 2017-11-30

Much has been published on the history of Japanese immigration to Brazil, Japanese Brazilians in Brazil, and Japanese Brazilians’ “return” labor migrations to Japan (known as dekassegui). Yet none has gone beyond and above the essentialized categories of “the Japanese” in Brazil and “Brazilians” in Japan. This book demonstrates that Japanese Brazilian identity has never been a static, fixed set of traits that can be counted and inventoried. Rather it is about being and becoming, a process of identity in motion responding to the push-and-pull between being positioned and positioning in a historically changing world. The book is based on the author’s painstaking research in Brazil and Japan between 1997 and 2013, involving extensive life history interviews (and follow-ups) with 116 Japanese Brazilians of several generations and diverse social backgrounds, in combination with substantial archival research and multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork. This book examines Japanese immigrants and their descendants’ historically shifting sense of identity that comes from their engagement or experience of historical changes in socioeconomic and political structure. Each chapter illustrates how Japanese Brazilian identity is in formation, across generation, across gender, across class, across race, and in the movement of people between nations.